This week’s mystery movie was the 1973 Columbia film Oklahoma Crude, with George C. Scott, Faye Dunaway, John Mills, Jack Palance, William Lucking, Harvey Jason, Ted Gehring, Cliff Osmond, Rafael Campos, Woodrow Parfrey, Larry D. Mann, John Dierkes, Hal Smith, Karl Lukas and Wayne Storm. Continue reading
Note: This is a post I wrote in 2006 for the 1947project.
January 17, 1947: William (Big Bill) Tilden, 54-year-old internationally known tennis star, yesterday was sentenced to serve nine months in the County Jail with a road gang recommendation by Juvenile Judge A.A. Scott for contributing to the delinquency of a 14-year-old boy.
Judge Scott excoriated Tilden for his actions, declaring: “You have been the idol of youngsters all over the world. It has been a great shock to sports fans to read about your troubles.
“I am going to make this an object lesson, no only to other persons tempted to do similar things, but also to parents who are too busy to concern themselves in determining what type of persons their youngsters are associating with,” Judge Scott commented.
Note: This is an encore post from 2007.
January 17, 1907
Los Angeles
On a trip from Utah to visit his daughter, H.E. Gibson keeps getting lost as he wanders around Los Angeles. No, it’s not because Gibson is 80, for his mind is still sharp. It’s because he hasn’t been back since 1848 and things have changed just a bit.
Even the old familiar landmark of Ft. Hill is covered with homes, he says. About the only spot in town he recognizes is the Plaza, where he keeps returning to get his bearings.
Gibson came to California with the “Flash Emigrant Colony” to establish Mormon settlements. The group couldn’t raise the money to buy Rancho Cucamonga, so they bought a parcel of land in San Bernardino, The Times says. Continue reading
Read the entire Los Angeles Star of Jan. 17, 1863, courtesy of USC and the Huntington Library.
January 17, 1863: The Star notes that after a year of being banned from the U.S. mails for publishing treasonous articles in support of the Confederacy, it will once more be available through the mail.
Mr. Humphries, who lives near San Gabriel, celebrates having the entire family, “down to the youngest grandchild” together “under the paternal roof.” “Dancing was kept up with great spirit until daylight.”
Joseph Winston is married to Dona Maria J. Bauchet.
Gov. Stanford, in his message to the Legislature, wants to raise the tax by 23 cents on $100. The Star does not approve.
A sample of the Star’s editorial:
In everybody’s life there is a dark, unforgettable moment when it doesn’t appear he’s going to make it. A downtown group somehow got around to discussing the this topic over coffee, and Ken Bromfield Jones, Title Insurance employee and spare-time TV actor, recalled his big near miss.
In 1942 he was in command of a gun post on HMS Londonderry, convoying ships north of Ireland. During a German air attack he was shot through a lung. Hours later, he was removed to a hospital ashore.
In the night he came out of a sedative. He felt no pain, only extreme lassitude. As in a dream he heard a nurse say, “He’ll be on the slab by morning.” Continue reading
Some stories I’d rather not print.
And when I first heard about what a bunch of grown men and women were doing to a kid named Butch Harris, I filed the information into that category.
It was a little too unbelievable, too grimy, to put in a newspaper.
That was three months ago. At the time, Butch and some classmates of his had accepted an invitation to all boys at 87th Street School, here in downtown, to join the Cub Scouts.
But not Butch. He was ignored — subtly like a sledge hammer. Continue reading
Jan. 16, 1947: Chef Tubbs is opening a restaurant at 1305-7 E. Olympic Blvd.
Olympic Boulevard and Central Avenue, via Google Street View.
January 16: Local 27 of the American Federation of Teachers, meeting in Washington, called the Disney feature film “Song of the South” “insidious and subtle propaganda against the Negro.”
According to Paul Cooke, head of Local 27, actor James Baskett was “hampered by having to portray the fixed conception of the Negro — a lazy, hat-in-hand, spiritual-singing inferior ‘old rascal.’ ” Cooke also criticized the film for the theme of “the Negro in service to white people, the Negro apparently whose only thought is to help solve the problems of white people.”
Today is Jan. 15, the anniversary of Elizabeth Short’s death. As is the custom, the Daily Mirror will be dark.
Trim your roses in her memory.
An engaging stranger named Peter Buchanan came into the office, apologized for taking my time, handed me a typewritten half-sheet of paper and asked me to read it and perhaps check it.
It was a theory he had spent 15 years developing, he said, and he felt it was vital for the world to know.
“As American scientists study the electron,” it began, “the electron will become more capricious, defiant of observation and measurement because
American scientists start with the wrong hypothesis.”
That’s as far as I got because the rest of it was about wave mechanics, quantum
phenomena and mathematical equations, including Einstein’s. He lost me. Continue reading
Postscript to a tragedy:
Two and a half years ago, a young Norwalk housewife returned from the home of a neighbor to find her husband sprawled dying across his bed. He had been shot through the head with a .22-caliber rifle.
There was no mystery to the fatal shooting. Within minutes after they arrived at the scene, County Sheriff’s Department detectives had three suspects in custody, and detailed confessions from each.
And it was those confessions which turned the killing into one of the most bizarre tragedies ever to take place in Southern California.
The story was headlines, not only here, but all across the nation. Continue reading
Note: Two pages were inadvertently omitted from the upload. They have been added. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.
Introducing the Black Dahlia Book Club, beginning January 20, 2026, in lieu of the Ask Me Anything sessions on George Hodel and Steve Hodel.
I’m going to begin with “The Black Dahlia Murders,” by George Clark, from the October 1948 issue of True Detective. This isn’t the first pulp magazine article about the murder of Elizabeth Short, but it is by far the most influential because it resulted in the Leslie Dillon debacle.
Note: The article was written from newspaper articles and must be approached with skepticism.
I’ll discuss the article in my live YouTube session, January 20, at 10 a.m. Pacific time on YouTube/LMHarnisch. Email me your questions and I’ll answer them!
The article is on the jump. Continue reading
Here’s a quick reminder that the Black Dahlia Book Club begins next Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific time on YouTube.
Remember: The anniversary of Elizabeth Short’s death is Thursday, if you mark the day, please be respectful.
And no, the Black Dahlia case isn’t solved. Michael Connelly, Rick Jackson, Mitzi Roberts and Christopher Goffard all got played. The code guys who signed off on the “solution?” They manipulated their method to a stunning degree to get the desired results. It’s nonsense.
LAPD officers keep control as a large crowd gathers at LAX in anticipation of the arrival of Deputy Soviet Premier Anastas Mikoyan. His plane was diverted to Burbank, where he landed without incident, The Times said.
Today, Anastas Mikoyan (1895-1978) is hardly a household name and his trip to Los Angeles is mostly a footnote to history. His AP obituary didn’t even mention that he had visited the city. With the nation’s fears about communism and the Soviet Union, public sentiment was far different and his brief stay received wide publicity. Continue reading
And so we complete our journey through the official documents telling the unfortunate saga of Walter and Christine Collins. I heard from a number of Daily Mirror readers who enjoyed the trek (scanning all these documents was more labor than I expected), one author working on a Collins project who was not terribly pleased that I was posting them on the Internet and from at least one reader asking “who cares?” Continue reading
This week’s mystery movie was the 1949 movie Tulsa, with Susan Hayward, Robert Preston, Pedro Armendariz, Lloyd Gough, Chill Wills, Edward Begley, Jimmy Conlin and Roland Jack. Continue reading
January 10, 1909: If you strip away the moralistic tone used by the anonymous Times reporter, the problems of the young men caught up in gambling (in this case horse racing) a century ago are quite modern.
Wrecked on the rocks of the betting game! Of how many young men of Los Angeles, who but a few months ago held positions of honor or trust, and are now serving time on the chain gang, is this true?
At right, Frank Reynolds, vagrant.
Note: This is an encore post from 2018.
Jan. 9, 1947: The Sentinel reports on the ruling by the Los Angeles Police Commission in the case of Edythe L. Galloway, 434 E. 48th St.
On Nov. 6, 1946, the Police Commission voted to investigate the allegations of brutality by Detectives Hansen (No. 7495) and Grutsch (No. 3964) against Galloway.
Note: For those who just tuned in, we’re going to reboot the concept of the 1947project (founded by Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak) by going day by day through 1947 – but using the Los Angeles Sentinel, an African American weekly, rather than the very white and very conservative Los Angeles Times. We promise you an extremely different view of Los Angeles.
(The historic Los Angeles Sentinel is available online from the Los Angeles Public Library. We encourage anyone with a library card to delve into the back issues and explore the history of black L.A.
January 9, 1913: We like to think that the past was a kinder, simpler time — when life moved at a slower pace. But no.
The Times publishes a Page 1 news map “as an aid to the busy reader helping him to devour a body of news many columns in length.”
Note: This is an encore post from 2007.
January 9-10, 1907
The worst storm in 23 years blew across Southern California with the force of a gale, dumping more than an inch of rain in Pasadena, killing an Orange County rancher, washing out railroad tracks and collapsing tunnels, and leaving nearly every small ship in Santa Barbara sunk, driven ashore or pounded to pieces.
Floodwaters destroyed a railroad bridge under construction near Ventura, cutting off the Southern Pacific’s coastal rail service, and at Summerland, oil rigs along the shore were ripped to pieces. The San Fernando Valley was especially hard hit: The Times reports that a bridge over the Big Tujunga Wash was underwater and that the river was a mile wide and impassible. The roar of water at Pacoima can be heard two miles away, The Times says.
January 8, 1958
Monday at 6:30 a.m., as Marvin Hanks of East L.A. walked from his home to his garage to drive to work, he observed that the full moon in the western sky was green–grass green.”What goes on here?” he asked himself. Later in the day, he referred his wonderment here.
What you saw, Marv, was a celestial phenomenon known as a green flash. It’s unusual but not rare and has long been the subject of study.
As Ray Holmes, APCD senior meteorologist, explained it, the light rays from the moon bend as they pass through different atmospheric densities, creating a rainbow effect that can change from pale yellow or orange to blue. The green is more easily seen that the others. Continue reading
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